


flightless bird (dumb, wild, and free)

by JennaCupcakes



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Der Himmel Über Berlin has been hunted and killed for plot ideas, Kissing, M/M, Religious Themes, Requited Love, Slow Burn, So much kissing, Unrequited Love, faith - Freeform, i really wasn't kidding about the religious themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 10:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19926865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaCupcakes/pseuds/JennaCupcakes
Summary: There is a story that circulates among the Host.It is a whispered tale – not that there are mouths to whisper, here, at the beginning of creation, or if there are, there are too many. It is only the second story since creation.It is said that, in the beginning, when God made the angels, She made some of them flawed.Aziraphale is beginning to suspect he may be one of them.





	1. Part I

**Part I.**

There is a story that circulates among the Host.

It is a whispered tale – not that there are mouths to whisper, here, at the beginning of creation, or if there are, there are too many. It is only the second story since creation.

The first one did not end well, so this one is a cautionary tale.

It is said that, in the beginning, when God made the angels, She made some of them flawed. Whether or not this was intentional is subject to fierce debate among the angels. After all, She is incapable of making mistakes. Since this is the case, why would She intentionally create something imperfect?

Either way – that is how demons came about.

* * *

Aziraphale’s story begins with an act of compassion.

He has been in the garden for all of seven days so far. Thrust into material existence, he has taken most of them to get accustomed to: 1) a linear flow of time, 2) containing his presence within the confines of a body, 3) one memorable afternoon of testing out his wings over the garden wall, and 4) the flaming sword he is expected to keep by his side at all times.

It’s strange, this new order. There he had been, singing praises with the Host, and the next thing he knew they made him a guide and protector of the garden, angel of the Eastern gate. A high honour, he is constantly assured.

There are other Cherubim in the garden. Aziraphale tried to make polite conversation with one of them set to guard the tree, but their face flickered, and suddenly their human features were superimposed by an ox and an eagle face. Aziraphale didn’t know how to respond to that.

But now there is activity in the garden.

The sunlight, which was ever so pleasing just an hour ago, has been growing oppressively hot, stifling almost. Just as Aziraphale begins to wonder if something is seriously wrong, there is a shriek, and a flash – and the other Cherubim all disappear. Then, like a bucket of cold water, Aziraphale feels it: Divine wrath.

The tree.

He hurries from his post. The fruit is still on the ground, core half-eaten. No sign of the couple.

Aziraphale knows what this means. The rules regarding the tree are very clear.

“Ach, but it was only seven days!” He mutters to himself. It’s silly. Seven days are literally all the time in the world.

Far, far off in the distance, thunder rolls.

Something moves in the bushes by the Eastern gate.

He rushes back.

The two humans clothed themselves hastily. Aziraphale remembers the looks on their faces when they first set foot into the garden: the blissful innocence and wonder of someone who was seeing everything for the first time. Now their faces look hardened, set.

“Wait!” He calls.

He doesn’t know why. There isn’t anything he can do. The rules are clear. They broke the rules, which is hard to fathom for him in the first place. Luckily, Gabriel spent a long time explaining what he calls ‘God’s little freedom of choice experiment’ to Aziraphale. It’s all terrifyingly novel.

“Wait,” he calls again, a little out of breath, not used to holding physical form. The couple, however, has already stopped. They regard him warily. He is glad that he has chosen to manifest in a form that looks – for all intents and purposes – mostly human.

“I…”

He wants to say something. He doesn’t know what. He has watched them for seven days in the garden, and he doesn’t yet have anything to compare it to, but right now it feels like a lifetime. They had been happy. Eve could have birthed her child here.

Their faces remain unchanged, even as Aziraphale struggles for the right words to say. He can’t think of any, because he can’t imagine what they are feeling right now. It is beyond his capacity to imagine.

“Take this,” he says, impulse overtaking conscious thinking. He holds out the sword he has carried at his side the last seven days. The couple regards the sword. Eve takes it, swings it a couple of times, then hands it to Adam.

“You have to go now,” Aziraphale says apologetically.

“We know,” Eve says.

Aziraphale thinks he can recognise the look in her eyes – there is regret, like she feels sorry it had come to this, but it was going to be for the best of everybody.

Aziraphale watches them go.

Some time later, he returns to the top of the walls of Eden, to cast out one last gaze into the world from Paradise. He knows already he will not return here.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if you did the bad thing, and I did the good one?”

Aziraphale wonders where the other Cherubim have gone to, that the Serpent of Eden can sneak around here with impunity. Maybe they think it doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe it really doesn’t.

The figure next to him looks human, except for the snake eyes. Aziraphale doesn’t really have an answer to the question of what he thought a demon would look like, but this isn’t it. He expected more… sulphur. A little more visible darkness. Horns, maybe.

That he can’t spot any obvious difference between himself and the Serpent doesn’t make him feel any better.

Aziraphale chuckles. Then, the horror of what Crawly is suggesting dawns on him.

“There’s a story, or so I’ve heard tell, among the Host,” Crawly says. “That God made some angels flawed.”

“How do you even hear stories from the Host?”

Aziraphale doesn’t understand why Crawly is still here. His job is done, surely he now has orders to move on and make life difficult for the new couple, cast out into a world beyond God.

Crawly shrugs.

Aziraphale doesn’t want to think about this particular story right now. He looks at Crawly. He is nothing like that, right?

* * *

The second part of Aziraphale’s story begins in the ruins of a church – an end, reframed as a beginning – flames licking at the stone, ash drifting through the air like snow. It begins with a hand, holding out a leather bag like a sacrificial offering, fingers brushing for the briefest amount of time.

“Lift home?”

In the time we’ve left the angel to his own devices, many things have happened. Humanity, cast out from Paradise, has spread out across the entire planet. Heaven and Hell have contented themselves with second-hand accounts of the proceedings on Earth. Crowley, apparently, has acquired a human first name.

The thing that hasn’t changed is that Aziraphale is still too comfortable in his skin, which is a paradox, because just thinking that makes him extremely uncomfortable. He reasons that he is supposed to be comfortable, he can’t be a guardian of Earth if he sticks out like a sore thumb, four faces and all, but he is also aware that it’s a sorry excuse.

He isn’t exactly Heaven’s favourite angel. Or he wouldn’t be, if Heaven ever bothered to check. So far, they haven’t, and so he lives on in limbo.

Anyway, back to the church.

Aziraphale has just been saved from embarrassment and potential discorporation by his friend – his _enemy_ – Anthony J. Crowley. Around them, the ruins of a church are still smouldering. A part of Aziraphale is mourning the loss of such a beautiful house of worship.

Aziraphale is now holding the bag of books.

A little note on Aziraphale – he has been aware that Crowley is in love with him for several thousand years. He has been meaning to do something about it – like telling Crowley to knock it off – for almost as many. He’s just never gotten around to it.

Aziraphale looks at Crowley. That a demon should be capable of compassion seems strange to most angels, but to Aziraphale, it has become as natural as gravity. As relied on as breathing. But the fact that Crowley is here, right now, means the world to Aziraphale.

This part of the story begins with a realisation: that Aziraphale loves Crowley back.

* * *

How did an angel of the Lord get it so wrong? Did he get it wrong? Those are questions that can only be answered looking backwards, through six thousand years of self-denial, longing, and guilt.

Let’s have a look.


	2. Part II

**Part II.**

“A Principality?”

Behind Aziraphale, the gates of Eden were bricked up. On the wrong side of the walls, the air was hot and full of sand. This, then, was the downside of material existence.

The archangel Gabriel didn’t seem fazed. His smile was wide.

“It’s a high honour,” he said, “We’re making you protector of all the Earth, Aziraphale!”

Aziraphale didn’t have much experience with smiles, but he felt they shouldn’t show quite so many teeth.

“I’m most grateful! It’s only…”

He cast a look over his shoulder, out into the desert. He thought he’d go back to the throne. Earth was nice, but he’d taken the assignment out of a sense of duty – all born out of love for the Almighty, of course. Now that it was over, surely he would get to go back? To sing Her praises with the other Cherubim and Seraphim?

 _“Holy God we praise Thy Name_ ,” he had sung. His voice had intermingled with those of his siblings. The echo of it still snuck around his mind.

“Yes?” Gabriel pressed. In a world that was just beginning to slowly spin on its axis, he already looked like a man running out of time.

 _“Holy, holy, holy Lord_ ,“ he had sung. He longed to feel a part of that choir again. Having a body, being someone instead of a whole host of something was nice but… it was lonely.

Well, if Gabriel said it was such a high honour…

“Thank you, Gabriel. I will devote myself to the task.”

* * *

Aziraphale had left the garden behind a couple of decades ago.

He didn’t know if it even still existed in this world. All he knew was that this was a very different place from Heaven: There were no harmonies. There was a lot less symmetry, though whenever Aziraphale caught sight of a flower with Fibonacci-patterns, it made him smile. Geometry soothed his homesickness.

The oasis was nice, however.

He’d been watching for most of the aforementioned decades. Whatever he’d expected of humanity in the beginning, they managed to surpass it. They baffled him at every turn with their ingenuity.

Take this lake, for example. It was fairly straightforward: Human bodies were made mostly of water (just how much water always shocked Aziraphale, who hadn’t yet taken a biology class), and they needed water to survive. Put in a couple of places where sweet water collected naturally, and the humans were set.

And then they swam in it!

There was no telling what they would come up with tomorrow.

“Principality.”

He’d been sitting in quiet contemplation of the oasis lake. It was early yet, too early for anyone in the town to be awake. Aziraphale liked to come here at this time, since it gave him precious moments where he didn’t have to work so hard at being one of them, at fitting in, at being unobtrusive. Out here, he could remember the few twinkling stars the rising sunlight hadn’t yet erased as if they were his missing limbs. He could close his eyes and open a hundred more and _see_ , with a clarity that his human body didn’t allow.

The voice that had spoken belonged to a figure standing not far from Aziraphale, where no one had stood a mere second ago. Aziraphale recognised an archangel when he saw one.

“Archangel.”

He nodded in acknowledgement.

The figure had black skin, like most of the humans around here. They could have passed for human easily enough, too, had it not been for the speckles of gold littering their face like a constellation. It was dazzling. They were ethereal.

“I haven’t had a chance to come down here,” The archangel said.

“It’s beautiful,” Aziraphale said automatically. Then he remembered he was talking to an archangel and wondered if anything could really compare to the beauty of Heaven. He hadn’t been back in a while. To someone who’s memory of Heaven was still fresh, Earth was probably a very desolate place.

To his surprise, the archangel agreed. “It is.”

They pointed at a few trees swaying in the breeze. “What are these?”

“That is a fig tree,” Aziraphale said, “It has the most delicious fruits. And in that field back there, they’re growing wheat and barley.”

The archangel nodded, taking it all in. Aziraphale had been told that archangels were supposed to be the messengers of God. It must be exhausting, he thought, to always go about carrying messages and never have a chance to sit still.

“What’s your name?” He asked, “I’m Aziraphale.”

“Uriel,” The archangel said, “I have to go.”

“It was nice to meet you!” Aziraphale called, but the figure had already disappeared. With them went the brief memory of Heaven, like catching the scent of a once-familiar place that comforted and hurt in equal parts.

* * *

“What are you doing?”

The figure that next appeared to Aziraphale as he sought out the oasis was most decidedly _not_ Uriel – this angel was shorter, balding on top, with an expression reminiscent of permanent toothache. Aziraphale knew him as Sandalphon.

Sandalphon’s face was halfway between puzzled, if an angel could feel such an emotion, and annoyed.

“It’s called _swimming_ ,” Aziraphale explained, “The people here do it to clean and refresh themselves, and sometimes recreationally.”

He had decided to finally give swimming a try after Uriel’s visit. Following the example of the people in town, he’d stripped off his clothes at his hut and then walked, naked as God had made him, the short few metres to the water. It had been pleasant on his nude form. The lake sparkled in the late afternoon sun, cooling and alluring. There had been no swimming in Heaven, nor anything that compared to it.

“Well, whatever it is, stop it. I have a message to deliver,” The archangel said impatiently.

Not another curious visitor then.

Aziraphale was a little disappointed.

About to draw himself out of the water, he remembered that he wasn’t wearing any clothes. They were all the way back at his little hut. Not a concern between angels, it would however appear strange to any human walking past.

A short moment of guilt later, he snapped his fingers, to appear – dry and clothed – next to the archangel.

“Well,” Aziraphale said. He had forgotten what talking to other angels was like. Or he hadn’t forgotten, but he wasn’t accustomed to it anymore. “What is the message, then?”

“We’ve updated our policy.”

“That’s nice.”

Aziraphale – who had just begun cooling down in the pleasant water – was starting to sweat again. It was hot in the sun. The angel probably didn’t feel it. Most of them weren’t issued full-range bodies.

“The last miracle you performed violated our policy.”

Aziraphale tried to think back. Did they mean drying himself off just now…?

“Err… which one, precisely?”

Sandalphon pointed an accusing finger at the little lake Aziraphale had just climbed out of. The rest of his face remained as impassive as ever.

“You saved the oasis. It was going to dry out within the year. But you replenished the groundwater that keeps it fed. Now it will remain here.”

“Err… yes.”

Aziraphale racked his brain. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, really. One of the women had repeatedly complained to other people around the place that there were brown spots popping up on some of the leaves. She feared that the water was running low. It hadn’t taken Aziraphale much to confirm it, and even less to fix the problem. It seemed to him a very straightforward miracle.

“We do not give out miracles indiscriminately,” Sandalphon said, “Some of the people who benefited from your decision may be undeserving. Next time, please take that into account.”

Sandalphon turned to leave.

“Now, hold on just a second!” Aziraphale called. “What does that mean?”

“We’ll send you a memo,” Sandalphon said over his shoulder.

* * *

“I’ve always wondered what happened to that sword of yours.”

It was two centuries after the garden. Aziraphale had settled in a small community, learning cuneiform from a scribe. He thought he was rather good at it. He loved the idea of keeping records – when his teacher let him, he would keep failed attempts at transcription and bring them home. Imperfections fascinated him almost more than perfections, these days.

The voice that had just pulled Aziraphale out of his contemplation of the selection of dried dates at the market belonged to one familiar to Aziraphale, though he hadn’t seen him in a while: Crawly.

“What concern is that of yours?” Aziraphale said, acknowledging Crawly with a nod. Somehow, it didn’t seem right for the demon to just wander up to him like they were acquainted.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Crawly shrug. Aziraphale, pressed by the presence of the demon to make a decision, picked up a handful of fruit and shoved them at the vendor. She named a price. He paid and departed.

Crawly followed.

“Begone, Serpent!”

As attempts at banishment went, this was a rather lame one. Crawly wasn’t just any old demon. He was at least of equal standing to Aziraphale, albeit in Hellish terms. If Aziraphale really wanted to cause him trouble, he would need to try a little harder.

However, with humans, it was often enough to just be rude. They usually got the hint.

“You look… different,” Crawly said. Apparently, he was immune to minor banishment as well as subtle hints.

“I’m trying to blend in,” Aziraphale responded.

“No it’s not that, it’s –“ Crawly looked him up and down as he did a quick lap around the angel. “You used to have more faces.”

“Oh. That.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips.

“I changed jobs.”

Crawly frowned. “That’s a thing they do now? They didn’t use to do that when I was up there.”

“Well, times were _different_ then,” Aziraphale said curtly.

“Hmpf.” Crawly didn’t seem impressed. “What are you now, then?”

“That’s no concern of yours!”

Aziraphale kept walking. Crawly followed, unerringly. Eventually, Aziraphale reached his house.

“What do you want?” He asked. He didn’t like how comfortable Crawly seemed around him. He didn’t like the conspiring looks and familiar greetings. He didn’t like how easily they bantered, like they were _familiar_.

“Just checking in on my enemy,” Crawly said. His grin was broad, satisfied with giving such a clever answer. His braids looked like they had caught fire in the sunlight. Aziraphale wondered if Crawly did them himself, or if he wasted miracles on his vanity.

“Well, you know where I am. Good day.”

Aziraphale turned on his heel and went inside the building, where the air was stale but cooler. There was a feeling of unrest in his gut that didn’t subside all day, and though the dates he had bought were sweet, they didn’t spark the usual pleasure.

* * *

“What do you see here, every day?”

They stood in the market square, unnoticed by the passers-by. Uriel, face set, met Aziraphale. It wasn’t their first meeting since the oasis, but every meeting they had brought up memories of Heaven for Aziraphale. He almost forgot, here on Earth, how different things were in Heaven. How high the viewpoint was. How large the scale. Whenever he talked to Uriel, he felt like he could barely poke his head beyond the edge of the horizon.

Aziraphale considered the market square.

“I see honest merchants who put their skill and craft into beautiful goods to sell. I see their customers ecstatic, going home, enjoying their find.”

He turned his head a little bit. “I see dishonest merchants, swindling their customers for just a bit of their coin. I see people call them out, I see merchants swear they’ll never do it again and I see some of them doing it again and some of them not.”

Still, Uriel’s face betrayed nothing.

“I see children. For them, everything is new. Everything is the first time they see something.”

Aziraphale remembered what that had felt like: at the beginning of everything, when there weren’t butterflies but only the butterfly, not trees but the tree, not snakes but the snake. After two centuries, things started to repeat themselves. But his capacity to remember meant he could always remember what it felt like to be that child: to experience everything for the first time, with wonder at the work of God.

“It looks different, down here,” Uriel said.

* * *

Aziraphale was sitting on top of a hill. It wasn’t much of a hill – it didn’t offer more in elevation than a view of the surrounding landscape – but Aziraphale found that any port would do in a storm. Though maybe not in this storm. This storm would need quite the port.

Next to him sat the archangel Gabriel.

“What I don’t understand,” Aziraphale was in the process of saying, “… is, why does it have to be murder? That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”

Gabriel’s face was impassive. When Aziraphale pictured _justice_ , it was always Gabriel’s face that came to mind. Gabriel had been born to the task of judgement. He was always cold, impassive, removed – he stood above things. Not like Aziraphale.

“You have been watching them. So have I.”

“Yes, but… You can’t punish all of them for the actions of some of them!”

Gabriel shrugged. Below them, the procession to Noah’s boat was slowly subsiding. Aziraphale tried very hard to see things from Gabriel’s perspective.

Maybe there truly was no redemption when too many humans had strayed off the path. Maybe drastic times called for drastic measures. He was too close. How could he see who deserved punishment, and who deserved to live?

“We can,” Gabriel said simply.

* * *

“What happened to that scribe you used to hang out with?”

Crawly found him. Crawly always seemed to find him when he was having a moment of personal crisis. It was probably a demon thing.

“Who… oh. He died.”

Aziraphale still stared out at the plain before them as if watching would change anything.

“Already?” Crawley seemed surprised. “They do that, don’t they. Humans.”

The sky above them darkened.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said.

“You don’t have to watch this, you know.”

Aziraphale felt the words like a stab to the heart. He wished they had come from _anyone_ but Crawly. He couldn’t trust anything Crawly said to him.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Aziraphale said.

Crawly scoffed. He had stopped watching Aziraphale, looking out to the plain as well. Had Aziraphale dared to look, he would have seen Crawly’s face darken.

“Oh, believe me, angel, I understand.”

The first drop fell heavy on Aziraphale’s hand. He flinched.

“It’s starting.”

There would be panic, gradually rising with the floodwaters. Aziraphale pictured the unerring certainty on Gabriel’s face, and tried to channel some of that with moderate success.

“Brutal way to do it, flooding. There’ll be survivors to the initial flood.” Crawly’s tone was conversational. “I don’t know what’s worse, drowning or starving.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Done both. I just legitimately can’t decide.”

Aziraphale looked at Crawly in surprise. Crawly just shrugged. “Superstitious folk. You know how it goes. Discorporation’s just a bit of paperwork, really.”

Aziraphale didn’t expect the burst of sympathy he felt at that.

They watched the floodwaters rise over the course of several hours, then days. Aziraphale didn’t move. Neither, by extent, did Crawly. The demon was a warm presence among the cold gusts of wind and rain, just out of touching range but close enough to tease.

Aziraphale didn’t yet have the words to say it, but he was grateful for Crawly’s presence.

* * *

Aziraphale needed a minute.

In fact, Aziraphale needed five minutes.

Maybe he needed a century.

Aziraphale was fuming.

“They said he would be saved. They said he would be _saved_!”

He was pacing. The available floor space of his little hut was just too small to make it satisfying. But that didn’t stop him from pacing.

On the shelves, his cuneiform clay tablets shook. Scrolls rattled in their containers. Had he been paying a little more attention, he would have realised how hard he was projecting his fury.

As things stood, he felt very small, and very far away from Heaven.

“Angel.”

Aziraphale stilled.

“Crowley.”

It seemed inevitable that Crowley would find him now. Whether in the desert of Mesopotamia or the bustle of Jerusalem, Crowley had a knack for showing up when Aziraphale was at his lowest. Hadn’t it been enough that he’d found Aziraphale during the crucifixion?

He didn’t turn around to look at the demon. What could Crowley _possibly_ want right now?

“Is everything alright? I could feel divine fury from across town.”

“Everything is outstanding,” Aziraphale said. God, the control he put into that single sentence. He could have put it towards moving mountains.

There was a hand on his shoulder. He flinched, and Crowley withdrew his hand.

“Is everything alright?”

Aziraphale turned. He’d always thought Crowley’s eyes to be unsettling, but right now the yellow looked very warm, and very concerned.

He was missing something. He knew he was missing something. His perspective was too small, he didn’t have the bird’s eye view that was the benefit of Heaven, but every time he pressed Heaven for answers, he couldn’t fathom them. It hadn’t been like this before. He’d always been able to see the greater good.

And now Heaven killed Jeshua ben Miriam but promised him salvation and Aziraphale _couldn’t see it anymore_. What was it all for? Was there a point?

“They said he would be saved,” Aziraphale said against his better judgement.

Immediately, Crowley softened. “Oh.”

The hand was there again, reaching out, resting tentatively on Aziraphale’s arm. There was something on Crowley’s face that frightened Aziraphale, a look of recognition that threatened kinship. Aziraphale became suddenly aware of the fact that Crowley, too, had been an angel once. That maybe he had stood where Aziraphale stood now.

He tried to move away. Crowley followed.

“They don’t tell you everything, do they?”

Crowley’s voice wasn’t insistent; it was feather-soft. It was a voice that offered itself to agreement, before one had even found it in oneself. Aziraphale found himself nodding.

“To make a human suffer so much…”

He couldn’t finish the thought. His mind turned back to Golgotha. To Mesopotamia. The memos from upstairs just kept repeating instructions he found to have little bearing on the reality down here.

Crowley moved a second hand to his other arm. There were now two hands, gently holding either side of Aziraphale, like a cracked vase. And, assessing his brokenness, the turmeric-yellow snake pupils of Crowley’s eyes.

Aziraphale felt vulnerable. Aziraphale felt vulnerable, which at the same time was a strangely freeing sensation. He always tried so hard to be like the others. Let him be uncomprehending and human for once.

No one would believe Crowley if he told anybody, anyway.

As he was still formulating that thought, Crowley leaned forward. The hands on Aziraphale’s arms moved up to cup the sides of Aziraphale’s face. Crowley kissed him.

Something in Aziraphale relaxed. There was a warm mouth on his, and hands holding the sides of his face like it was something delicate, something precious, and nothing bad could happen to him while he was like this. Something had finally bridged the heart-eating loneliness he’d carried since he first left Heaven. It was as if he was back among his brethren, chanting choir rising to ever higher notes, ecstatic in their praise for God.

He sighed into the kiss, and Crowley took the slight parting of lips as an invitation. A tongue darted out, forked and too quick. It kindled something hot and deep in Aziraphale’s body, and with a start he became aware of his position.

He recoiled.

Crowley let him go. There was still nothing but concern on the demon’s face. Surely that was all a mask? What would it mean for Aziraphale if a demon could experience compassion?

“What was that?”

Crowley withdrew more slowly. It was an inch-by-inch backward crawl, so slow that Aziraphale could watch it happen. The concern, the openness of his eyes receded. What remained was a crooked smile.

Aziraphale couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss. He shouldn’t be thinking like this. And yet he was.

“Consider it a free sample, angel.”

“I don’t need your…”

He couldn’t seem to finish a single sentence in Crowley’s presence. The demon stubbornly existed in the space Aziraphale couldn’t touch with words.

“My what?” Crowley was positively leering now. It was obscene. Nothing like the gentle care with which he had held Aziraphale, and which Aziraphale would _not_ think about anymore.

“I don’t need your demonic temptations. I’m in _mourning_.”

What he really was, was lonely. But he didn’t want what Crowley offered. Couldn’t want it, really. Because if Crowley offered compassion, recognised the loneliness that Aziraphale was feeling – well, that didn’t bear thinking about.

He faced away from Crowley. Away from eyes that seemed too familiar. After a while, there were footfalls, and a voice dripping bitterness like honey: “See you around, angel.”

* * *

Uriel took him to see the grave three days later.

Aziraphale had suspected it to be punishment. Surely all of Heaven knew what he had done. Only a matter of time now before they told him he wasn’t cut out to be an angel. After all, all the way back in the beginning, God had made some angels flawed. Evidence was mounting that Aziraphale was one of them.

But if punishment was waiting for him, this wasn’t it.

“You’ll see,” Uriel said, “Everything will be different now.”

They were positively chatty.

“We’re all _very_ excited upstairs. Lots of changes in policy. Even I’m having trouble keeping up!”

They reached the graveyard. Aziraphale waited in the shadows between some laurel trees where Uriel told him to wait.

The smell was pleasant. It was warm, there was only the smallest hint of the breeze, and the scent was rich in the air. The scene seemed almost dreamlike as the three women came up, carrying with them scented oils in little clay containers. Aziraphale watched as Uriel, impassive, arms outstretched stepped into their path.

From his position, he couldn’t hear the words that were spoken. He just saw the fear on the women’s faces slowly turning to disbelief. One of them clasped a hand in front of her mouth. Then they dropped everything and rushed off.

“What did you tell them?” Aziraphale asked when Uriel returned. They strolled slowly through the graveyard. The look on Uriel’s face was one of uncharacteristic elation.

“The son of God has risen. They shall find him here no longer.”

Aziraphale felt the bottom drop out from under him. He mustered Uriel from the corner of his eye, suspicious, afraid that this was a test – but they didn’t know. They hadn’t noticed his crisis of faith, if it could even be called that. Uriel really had just wanted to share this moment with him.

“This is going to change everything,” Uriel declared.

Aziraphale could see that. They just hadn’t bothered to tell him about it beforehand.

“Why do you come down here, Uriel?” Aziraphale asked. “Besides for assignments, I mean.”

Uriel looked at Aziraphale. Their black, gold-speckled face looked so familiar that it hurt Aziraphale. Oh to be part of the Host once more like he used to, to feel only the harmony of Heaven instead of the canon of Earth.

“Earth intrigues me.”

Aziraphale wondered if Uriel understood. Maybe they could, with a little time, see the same things he saw.

But Uriel was an archangel: a messenger of God. No, he would only hurt himself looking for kinship with the archangel. They were all made to blend in, but they were not made to stay. That was _his_ job on Earth: a protector, a Principality.

It was beginning to feel like a very lonely post.

* * *

Aziraphale couldn’t stay in Jerusalem. He decided it was time for a change of scenery. Rome seemed the natural choice.

He wasn’t the only one, apparently.

He spotted the demon as soon as he entered the _taverna_. Crowley was sitting at the bar, clad in black with a silly wreath of silver laurel draped on his head like he wanted to style himself nobility. He was staring forlornly into a cup, taking long sips between huffing breaths. Dramatic as ever.

For a second, Aziraphale considered leaving. He hadn’t spoken to Crowley since what happened in Jerusalem.

But also… he hadn’t spoken to Crowley since what happened in Jerusalem. It was gnawing at him. He wanted to know where they stood.

He looked at the fire-red hair and the slumped back of the demon. It would be rude not to say hello. Let Crowley know he wasn’t unsupervised in his evil acts.

He slid into the seat next to Crowley as unobtrusively as possible.

“How’re you doing?”

Crowley turned. Aziraphale noticed, with a start, that he was wearing lenses to cover his eyes, tinted dark.

“Angel,” Crowley said. His tone was a carefully neutral greeting, free of its usual suggestive pitch. Compared to that, it was positively cold.

Uriel’s elation at the new upstairs policy aside, Crowley still looked much the same to Aziraphale. It seemed that the change of policy hadn’t affected demons. Some, then, were still beyond redemption.

“Still a demon, then?”

Crowley just gave him a look. It was scathing. Aziraphale felt his stomach twist.

“You’re still an angel, I see.”

Aziraphale busied himself with ordering a drink. The waitress smiled at him like she guessed at something. Aziraphale wished she was right. Whatever she imagined; it was probably better than this situation. He’d ruined more than he’d thought.

Crowley had always been so understanding in the past. It seemed strange that this one time, he couldn’t forgive the limits that Aziraphale’s angelic existence imposed on him. Not that Aziraphale thought of them as limits. They were simply indicators of where the right side was, and he wouldn’t cross them, because he was not like Crowley.

He had not been made flawed. He had remembered, at the right moment, that he had not been made flawed.

“What are you doing here, then?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley took another long sip of his wine. At this rate, there couldn’t be much left in the cup.

“Temptations. Thought I’d try my hand at the big one.”

“The Emperor?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley didn’t respond, which Aziraphale took as an admission. He mulled that over. Rome for Crowley’s side would be a big one. Could be he would have to stay in Rome a little while longer.

“And what about you?” Crowley asked, changing the subject.

“Needed a change of scenery,” Aziraphale mumbled. Couldn’t say: Jerusalem reminded me of you. Couldn’t say it, because that would mean admitting it to himself.

“Hmpf,” Crowley said. He turned back to his cup. Aziraphale was stuck on the tinted lenses Crowley wore. The demon had always used a glamour to direct the attention of people away from his eyes when they threatened to become a problem or cause for discorporation, but Aziraphale had always been able to see them. The lenses were simple, unobtrusive – and shut out Aziraphale as well. It was a pity. Aziraphale had enjoyed the turmeric warmth of them.

It felt like having a door shut in his face. And on top of that, Crowley – who was always the talkative one, always following Aziraphale and never giving him a moment’s peace – was now just sitting at the bar, drinking quietly, and stubbornly ignoring Aziraphale.

It was an answer to Aziraphale’s question, alright. It told him where they stood. He had remembered in the right moment that he had not been made flawed, but it had hurt Crowley.

It shouldn’t bother him. Crowley was a demon. He didn’t need Crowley’s approval. In fact, it was probably commendable that Crowley despised him now.

But bother him it did.

There had to be something he could do.

“I heard there’s this restaurant,” Aziraphale said, “Petronius. His oysters are apparently remarkable.”

“I’ve never eaten an oyster,” Crowley said pensively.

“Oh, well, let me tempt you…”

Crowley’s head shot up faster than should humanly be possible. Snakelike instincts, Aziraphale reminded himself.

Aziraphale gave a weak smile.

“No, I suppose that’s your job.”

Crowley grinned at him, then. It was completely lacking in mirth. It was all teeth, closer to a snarl than a smile.

Aziraphale waited some tense seconds. Five, six, seven, eight, nine. Then –

Crowley deflated. The grin disappeared, replaced by a look of resignation for the briefest of moments, before Crowley’s face reassembled itself into one of the more pleasing smiles he knew how to give.

“That sounds exciting, angel. Let’s go.”

* * *

It wasn’t that Aziraphale had been unobservant when it came to Crowley before, but in the decades after Jerusalem, in Rome, he paid special attention to him. But if the demon was hurt, he never said anything. More than that, other than the sullen afternoon conversation at the bar, it seemed as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

That was the first clue.

The second clue came north of the _limes_ , one wet winter day behind what was right now considered enemy lines.

It was refreshing to be on the same side for once. Which was just as well, because nothing else about the situation was refreshing.

It was snowing.

The snow had been coming down for two days now, sometimes in thick, heavy flakes, sometimes as a light coating, but never relenting. Even under the dense canopy of the forest, the snow had piled up.

Aziraphale had been following a bunch of too-young men to stop them from getting hurt. Crowley was here because he usually hung around where there would be trouble – not, as Aziraphale had learned, to cause it, but because it meant he could take credit for it later.

Crowley had gotten what he’d asked for. Aziraphale hadn’t.

“I hate this place,” Crowley said. It wasn’t the first time he had said it.

Aziraphale drew his blanket tighter around himself and scooted up to the small fire they had lit.

He wouldn’t be in this mess, he mused, if he hadn’t been so damned eager to _help_. He’d justified it as part of his assignment on Earth: to protect. But they had all just looked so terribly young. Aziraphale couldn’t stand it.

Crowley was restless. Two days in the forest he’d born without issue, but the demon could only remain in one place for so long. Aziraphale had known this moment would eventually come. But maybe he could eke out a couple more hours.

He stood, dropping the blanket and wrapping it up, to be stuffed back into his pack. Crowley’s gaze remained on him, following intently.

“Let’s cover some more ground before sunset,” Aziraphale said. Sunset came early in the winter.

Crowley stood as well, lithe and smooth in his movements. Aziraphale felt chilled to the bone, but Crowley didn’t seem bothered by the snow and the wind. Proximity to hellfire, probably. He’d always suspected Crowley ran hot.

They put out the fire and moved on. Aziraphale marched with method, eyes scanning the ground carefully for any tracks at all. Crowley moved more erratically; thumbs hooked into his belt. He trailed a little behind Aziraphale.

Like a bodyguard.

Or a guardian angel.

“How do you lose a cohort, anyway?”

Crowley’s tone was casual. His voice cut in the heavy-blanket silence of a forest covered in snow.

“They attacked the camp in the dark. I tried to hold off the attackers. The cohort was scattered.”

Aziraphale could feel the burning, intent stare of Crowley boring into his back. Crowley was always questioning his acts of compassion like there was something wrong with them. Bad enough that Heaven didn’t seem to understand what he was doing. He didn’t need Crowley telling him how futile it was.

“Angel.”

Crowley’s voice was now very close to Aziraphale’s ear. He’d moved up without Aziraphale noticing.

“Do you really think there’s anyone left?”

Aziraphale turned. Crowley’s face was open – he’d taken off his sunglasses a while back, it had probably been hard to see with them in the dim light of the forest – in a way that Aziraphale hadn’t seen in a while. The concern was plain on his face.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Aziraphale said, and immediately regretted how sharp it came out. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had the thought before. Legions disappeared in the Germanic forests all the time.

“Yeah, but I do get it,” Crowley responded, undeterred. He stopped short of touching Aziraphale, but he moved into the angel’s path so that Aziraphale had to stop.

“I know you want to see them saved. It’s what you do. It’s why I…”

A small smile crossed Crowley’s face and he shook his head. He never finished the sentence.

“I have a responsibility,” Aziraphale said, “I was entrusted with them! I was supposed to take care of them!”

“Angel, you volunteered yourself for a suicide mission. You _knew_ that. That you volunteered thinking you could change that doesn’t make it so.”

That cut right to the core of the worry that Aziraphale had been carrying around with him the last two days. Crowley was the devil on his shoulder, giving voice to his doubts.

That it came from Crowley meant that Aziraphale couldn’t stop now. Crowley would always take the easy way out, so Aziraphale had to persist.

“I have a responsibility,” Aziraphale reiterated. He moved around Crowley, marching on.

Crowley groaned and threw his hands up in the air.

“You’re a demon,” Aziraphale said, “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“You say the nicest things, angel,” Crowley said bitterly. But he followed.

They moved on. The light waned, and the forest floor became harder to see. Still, Aziraphale tried to make out footprints, find any clue that would betray the location of at least one of the men of the cohort whose command he had been entrusted with. And whose trust he had betrayed.

He was trying to repent, he knew. He was doing penance. Events had slipped out of his grasp when they shouldn’t have – couldn’t have, he was an angel endowed with the power of God – and here he was, two days after the fact, still trying to right them.

It was pointless. Or rather, it didn’t do anyone any good. Whatever had happened, had already happened.

He stopped. He closed his eyes. For a moment, he allowed himself to feel this admission of failure as deeply as he could. And then he let it go.

With it went a deep breath.

When he opened his eyes again, Crowley was watching him. For the first time since Crowley had found him the morning after the battle, Aziraphale could see him again, single-minded focus melting away: Crowley looked pale and tired, there was a twig stuck in his hair, and his boots were caked with mud. Aziraphale was sure he looked no better.

“I’m alright now,” he said.

Crowley nodded.

“Alright.”

He looked around. A rock formation a little ways away caught his eye.

“That looks like a good spot to set up camp.”

Oh. _Oh_.

It struck Aziraphale like a bell: clear and high and ever-so-obvious.

“Thank you, Crowley,” he said, taking a step forward, and – running on impulse – taking one of Crowley’s hand between his own.

Crowley had stayed because of him. Not out of some voyeuristic desire to see how it all turned out, no – Crowley had stayed because of Aziraphale. With no promise of reward, no ulterior motive. Crowley had stayed because of Aziraphale.

An act of compassion.

When Aziraphale took his hand, Crowley didn’t exactly flinch, but his mouth twitched downwards for a second – pained, or insecure? Aziraphale couldn’t tell.

“Don’t say that, Aziraphale,” Crowley said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

* * *

That was the second clue. Heaven, however, had decided that there was something about the number three that just seemed satisfying.

So three clues it was.

Uriel’s visits, despite promises of Heaven’s new policies, decreased in frequency. Sometimes Aziraphale just caught sight of them in a crowded place – a Roman market square, during mass, or by the bank of the Tiber on laundry day. Something told him that they weren’t watching him. They seemed more like someone trying to find a new perspective.

Rome didn’t so much collapse as fold in on itself. Aziraphale eventually made his escape, keeping an eye out for Crowley, who he now knew was just as lost in the chaos of humanity as he was. Even a demon sometimes got blindsided by the violence humanity was capable of.

Aziraphale found, to his delight, that his new home also had scribes. He hadn’t worked as a scribe since Mesopotamia. He settled down in a quiet, little monastery, and forgot all about the world for a while.

Which just meant that when the world re-entered his little bubble, it did so with a bang.

* * *

They were coming up the river, so the stable boy had said. They had already ransacked the town, and the monks had hoped that would still their bloodlust, but now hundreds of bearded, well-armed men and women were storming up the path that led from the village to the monastery.

Aziraphale’s heart sank.

He helped Brother Ancelm, who was the head of scriptures, remove the Bibles and manuscripts they had been copying from their escritoires, and put them in the cellar. It was futile and would probably do more damage to the manuscripts then good – there was little chance they wouldn’t be found and burned anyway, along with the monks.

Brother Thomas was trying to hide the monstrance and chalice they used for services. Aziraphale told him to leave it.

“If they find something valuable, they might leave the rest alone, and God will forgive us for sacrificing our treasure to safeguard Her Word.”

Brother Thomas looked unconvinced, but he stopped, and Aziraphale didn’t have time for a whole theological argument right now.

Aziraphale wondered if he should leave. Staying seemed like tempting fate asking for a discorporation. Still, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he left now. And he didn’t have time to pack up all of his books.

He stayed with the rest of the brothers. When Brother Jonathan called them all into the refectory, Aziraphale stayed with three of the younger boys who had only come to the monastery last spring. The youngest one was barely ten years old, and they were all deathly afraid.

The main door broke down with a deafening _crack_. There were shouts echoing through the halls. Aziraphale willed his thoughts into a peaceful direction, hoping to influence not just his Brothers but the raiders as well.

The boys flinched every time another shattering sound or shout rang out.

When the door to the refectory flew open, they hid their faces in Aziraphale’s robes. Aziraphale spoke a quick prayer, words coming out more as muscle memory than an actual appeal to a higher power. It had been so long since somebody had answered his calls. Had he really been one of the Cherubim once, closest to God’s throne?

“ _Holy, holy, holy Lord,_ ” his mind supplied.

His memory would later always produce two recollections of the scene that played out subsequently: In one, the raiders were every bit the fearful stereotype he had been led to believe, with dirty beards, wild eyes, bulging muscles and long, sharp swords. In the other, they simply looked scared as well, under a thickly applied coat of bravado, and the only thing that made them scary was the fact that they had weapons and the monks did not.

“Hey now.”

When somebody spoke, it was not – as Aziraphale had expected – the man who had first barged through the door, but a voice from somewhere off to the side.

“Geirolf, we’ve been _over_ this.”

Aziraphale blamed the mind-numbing fear for not recognising the voice immediately. Of _course_.

The leader of the raiding party beat Aziraphale to the question, however.

“Crowley. What are you doing here?”

It was a good question. Aziraphale was quite invested in finding out the answer.

“Protecting my assets against oath-breaking traitors such as yourself, Geirolf, isn’t that obvious?”

Crowley stepped out of a shadow that Aziraphale knew, for a fact, hadn’t been hiding a person just five minutes ago. Crowley wasn’t even supposed to _be_ here. He’d told Aziraphale he still wasn’t over the warmer climates.

When Crowley stepped into the light, Aziraphale had to hold back an audible reaction by way of a minor miracle: Crowley was sporting a beard reminiscent of the raiders at the entry to the refectory. His clothes were of a similar fashion, too, though his frame was still lithe rather than bulky and muscular. Nevertheless, the raiders seemed to know and fear him.

They all took a step back.

“We weren’t aware that you…”

“Weren’t aware that I _what_?”, Crowley pushed before their leader – Geirolf – could finish. He got like that, ever the pursuit predator, pushing and pushing before the target had a chance to recover. It took Aziraphale’s breath away, sometimes.

Crowley half circled the crowd of monks watching the scene before them play out, uncomprehending. He stopped halfway between the monks and the raiders.

“Weren’t aware that you had a claim,” Geirolf finished, “Where is the rest of your party, anyway?”

“Close by,” Crowley said in a way that lead Aziraphale to suspect that nobody was close by. He knew Crowley. He knew when the demon was bluffing. But he also knew that Crowley had the audacity to make any claim believable.

You always wanted to believe in a temptation.

“I suggest,” Crowley said slowly, “That you leave, _right now_ , and don’t show your face here ever again.”

The temptation hung in the air – leave under the guise of a stronger claimant scaring you off, avoid the potential of bloodshed, injury, and death. They had the treasure from the village. They didn’t need to prove themselves bold anymore.

Aziraphale saw Crowley staring them down one by one. One of the raiders – a tall woman, as far as Aziraphale could tell – managed to hold Crowley’s stare for a full minute, longer than any of the others. But even she relented, after a while.

They filed out sullenly, but leave they did. When the last of the raiders had crossed the threshold of the refectory, Crowley glanced back at Aziraphale, winked – and disappeared with a snap.

* * *

“An angel of the Lord.”

“No, Brother Francis, it most certainly was _not_ an angel of the Lord.”

“She sent Her most holy warrior to defend us in our hour of need!”

“No, Brother Thomas, that’s generally _not_ how She operates.”

Aziraphale knew it was a losing battle. The monks had decided the strange apparition in the refectory had been an angel, that they had been saved by God’s endless mercy, and Aziraphale – the actual angel of the Lord, thank you very much – was helpless against humans who had decided on an interpretation of a certain event. He excused himself to his quarters when it became too much.

He did not greet the demon lounging on his cot with more than a sidelong glance. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Crowley pouting. He was no longer sporting the beard, which was a relief.

“I put a lot of work into those treaty negotiations, you know,” Crowley said when Aziraphale had washed his face and still hadn’t said a word to him. “The least you could do is say hello. I know how much you like these silly little scribes and their picture books.”

“They think they were saved by an angel of the Lord,” Aziraphale said, accusingly.

Crowley sat up from his lounging position, suddenly very focussed. “Just so we’re clear, if anybody comes asking, that’s what happened. I sent the raiders onto the monastery, you thwarted me, no one’s the wiser.”

“Hmpf,” Aziraphale responded stiffly. Then, looking at Crowley’s face – all intent and focus and a small part fear – he relented. “Why don’t I say thank you?”

“Why do you insist on tormenting me, angel?”

Crowley threw himself back on the bed, an arm tossed over his face. Aziraphale – exiled from his own bed – chose a small, uncomfortable chair that was the only other piece of furniture in his cell. He’d only kept it because it was an excellent place to store his robes at night.

“If I could say, just between the two of us…” Aziraphale began. He watched Crowley’s face – what was visible from under his arm anyway – for any sign of discomfort.

Crowley made a displeased noise.

“Well, I’m grateful we were all saved today by the last-minute intervention of an angel of the Lord,” Aziraphale finished.

“I’m glad we’re on the same page, angel.”

“It was all terribly frightening,” Aziraphale said. Crowley didn’t seem inclined to move, so Aziraphale figured he might as well talk. He didn’t need to sleep.

“I can imagine, angel,” Crowley said. His voice seemed distant, like his thoughts were somewhere else, so Aziraphale just kept talking. He’d have to lay it on someone, and he was glad it wasn’t his fellow monks. For humans, the threat of dying was even more real than the fear of the pain and embarrassment that came with discorporation was for him.

“I was most worried for the books, really. We all put so much work into the books.”

“They look very impressive,” Crowley said.

“You looked at them?”

Aziraphale was surprised. Somehow, he hadn’t thought Crowley would much approve of or much care for the delicate work they did in preserving knowledge here. He’d always seemed one for the ephemeral.

“In passing.”

Crowley unfolded himself slowly from his position on the bed. Aziraphale found himself unable to tear his eyes away from the movement of every single limb stretching out. Crowley’s command of his body was unsettling because he didn’t move like most humans. Coming to think of it, he didn’t move like anyone Aziraphale knew.

“Well, this has been lovely!”

Crowley clapped and rubbed his hands together.

Aziraphale looked at Crowley like a puzzle. There were pieces of information he’d been collecting over the centuries that were just a few seconds shy of forming into a picture.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Aziraphale asked. He didn’t want Crowley to leave. Crowley had just saved him – again. And he couldn’t yet make sense of it.

Crowley looked to the side for a second, contemplating, then surged forward. His hands grabbed onto Aziraphale’s arms. His lips met Aziraphale’s in an open, wet, and downright filthy kiss, dragging Aziraphale forward and into the jumble of emotions he’d thought he’d freed himself of since Jerusalem. But as quick as it had started, it was over – Crowley pulled back and licked his lips.

“I’ll take that as my reward, angel.”

* * *

And so it would go.

Three clues.

Crowley was in love with Aziraphale.

He’d proven it in deeds of compassion he shouldn’t be capable of, and still Aziraphale asked himself if there was something wrong with him that a demon could feel that way about him.

A good angel would end this. A good angel would tell Crowley he was not wanted here. Aziraphale found reasons why he shouldn’t be doing what a good angel would do.

They traded favours. That’s what Aziraphale called it in his mind. Crowley was known to call it an Arrangement, which made Aziraphale uncomfortable, because he knew the sub-branch of literature that covered deals with devils. It rarely ever ended well for the non-demonic part of the deal.

They traded favours, and when the deed was done, Crowley would sometimes steal a kiss, and Aziraphale would let him, because he had terrible self-control.

Crowley kissed Aziraphale in the thirteenth century, after they hadn’t seen each other for a few hundred years. Crowley covered for one of Aziraphale’s miracles down at the coast, and afterwards they met up outside of the town Aziraphale was staying in, at the crossroads. The kiss was a hot, swallow-me-whole affair, traded under starlight. They were the only two people for miles, only stars above them and a gentle summer breeze. Crowley’s body was so pliable against Aziraphale, his lips warm and wet and soft. Aziraphale pulled back before he could lose himself in the sensation, but his lips tingled for months afterwards.

Crowley kissed Aziraphale briefly after they both first moved to London and Aziraphale covered for one of Crowley’s temptations. Crowley watched him with such hungry eyes when he came back to the inn, and the kiss was a sharp, two-sets-of-shark-teeth affair, but Crowley held Aziraphale so gently that the duality of it made Aziraphale’s head spin. Aziraphale wondered if Crowley was trying to convince himself that this was purely physical, and if his whole body was betraying him. In any case, he let Crowley take what he needed and told himself it was really quite commendable, to make a demon seek out the presence of Heaven again and again.

Aziraphale, of course, had not been made flawed and could therefore not be tempted so easily by Crowley.

There were gaps in his reasoning that might as well have been continental fault lines.

Aziraphale kissed Crowley when he came back from Edinburgh, technically. Crowley took him to see Hamlet a second time – the theatre was full to burst, and Crowley looked pleased as a punch the entire time. Aziraphale could hardly pay attention. Crowley was an itch under his skin and the demon damn well _knew_ it, the way he kept a respectable distance the entire evening and made no innuendos or moves. He was _teasing_ Aziraphale.

So when they came out of the theatre and Crowley offered to walk Aziraphale home, Aziraphale reached the end of his fraying nerves, pulled Crowley into an alley and kissed him desperately. That must have been Crowley’s plan, of course, but Aziraphale didn’t care in that moment. Crowley shivered under Aziraphale’s hands. Eventually, they moved on.

There were some things that Aziraphale didn’t tell Crowley.

There were thoughts that crossed his mind – mostly late at night – that were secret even to himself. Aziraphale didn’t dare share them. But in the dark hours, he hoped.

Crowley was a demon, of course, and if the past centuries had proven anything, it was that God’s mercy stopped at demons, no matter how inclusive Her policies were otherwise. Demons, it seemed, could not be forgiven, but then again, Crowley was nothing like most other demons. He wasn’t repenting, but he also wasn’t actively terrible. Aziraphale had seen his softer side and had been at the receiving end of his acts of compassion often enough to say that maybe, just maybe, Crowley was worth considering for divine mercy.

Crowley kissed Aziraphale after he rescued the angel from the Bastille. They were in an alley, and Aziraphale’s back was against a wall. Crowley put him in this situation, and Crowley was now licking hungrily into his mouth, so much so that the back of Aziraphale’s head thumped against the wall painfully. He couldn’t care less. His demon was on him, they were both safe and sound, and Crowley was kissing him like he had to make sure that Aziraphale was unharmed.

Afterwards, Aziraphale was often a little scared.

That was an understatement.

Afterwards, Aziraphale sat and wondered when Heaven would find out and take him away from this place that he had made for himself. He wondered if it would hurt. Maybe he could explain that Crowley really was nothing like the other demons – but in the light of day,Aziraphale knew these thoughts were folly. There was no middle ground, either one was a demon, or one wasn’t, and that was why it was so vital that Aziraphale stay on the right side.

Still.

If sometimes Aziraphale looked at Crowley out of the corner of his eye and imagined what it would take for him to be forgiven – that was nobody’s business but his own.

* * *

The years passed. Aziraphale made up excuses. Crowley kissed him, and he kissed back. And, after centuries, he found himself standing in the ruins of a church, with a briefcase full of books.

This is where we rejoin Aziraphale, who has just finished taking apart every moment he has known Crowley and found that yes, this love has been there since the beginning.

Let’s have a look.


	3. Part III

**Part III.**

Aziraphale is alone in his apartment with a bag of books. It’s 1941, and he has just left behind a ruined house of worship and then Crowley. Now it’s just him and his books and the secret he kept from himself, and now he has to unpack all of that.

He loves Crowley. There is no way around it. The realisation, once it strikes him, is a Pandora’s box. He loves Crowley, and whatever he has told himself the past centuries was self-deception at best, and malicious lies at worst.

He is an angel in love with a demon. That must mean… Surely that means…

In the beginning, there was a story among the Host. It started long before the Earth was created. Mouths whispered it before mouths existed: Some angels were created flawed. That was how demons came to be.

And Aziraphale… Aziraphale… is one of them.

For one night, instead of panicking and burying his feelings, he considers his options.

He could throw caution to the wind, he supposes. If he opens the floodgates now, he knows he will not be able to shut them, and Crowley is never far. Crowley always smiles just _so_ , he walks next to Aziraphale and circles him when they stand still. Crowley looks so hopeful sometimes, like he can’t help himself, and Aziraphale’s heart always feels ready to burst out of his chest at that. And though Aziraphale has always pretended that those kisses were more for Crowley’s benefit than his own, there is a truth that he can now acknowledge: that he craves the comfort, the closeness and the warmth of Crowley. He can still remember their first kiss, nearly two thousand years ago: the dry, chapped warmth of Crowley’s lips on his and the spark of heat he felt at the touch of Crowley’s tongue.

With that, however, will come the Fall, capital _F_ and all.

Can he bear that? He doesn’t think he could. It doesn’t seem fair: None of the other angels know God’s creation as intimately as he does. They don’t love it like he does. To lose that capacity to love – no, he cannot do it. Not even for Crowley. The other angels can dictate policy decisions, but Aziraphale is the one who was appointed guardian of the Earth. He takes that assignment seriously. To abandon his post is unthinkable to him, not out of a blind sense of duty but out of love for his task.

It will hurt. He knows this. God has not made angels to stop loving. She has not made any of Her creatures to deny themselves the truth of their hearts, but angels especially are beings of love before all else. It is their fundament.

Aziraphale considers this pain. It has siblings in his heart: When he lost the man who taught him to write cuneiform in Mesopotamia, when he watched Jeshua die on the cross, when he lost a cohort in the winter forest of Germania. He has lived through all of these.

He will survive Crowley.

Aziraphale buries. He digs expertly, with shovel and zeal, putting his back into it. Let nobody say he left anything alive.

* * *

It doesn’t help that Hell starts the Apocalypse. It doesn’t help that Gabriel keeps reminding Aziraphale how insufficient he is as an angel.

“If I could reach God, I’m sure She would agree with me! She made this world! I’m sure she doesn’t want it all to end!”

He sounds desperate. He is grasping at straws. Gabriel has policies and memos and the authority of a whole bureaucracy on his side. Aziraphale has only his faith.

“You’re ridiculous,” Uriel says. Aziraphale tries to read their face. Out of all the angels, their failure to understand stings the worst. When the world was new, Uriel stood with him and looked upon it. They had the chance to see what he sees. Now, it will all end, and Uriel will never get the chance to swim in an oasis lake or eat dark chocolate. They will never eat sushi. They will never collect rare books.

There is a story among the Host. Aziraphale is beginning to accept it as his origin story.

He rushes through the worst week of his life thinking he will die and then nobody will ever have to know how bad he is at being an angel.

Unfathomably, he makes it out the other end alive.

* * *

Aziraphale sits on the tarmac. Aziraphale sits on a bus. Aziraphale sits in Crowley’s apartment, knees drawn to his chest, and waits for the fire-and-brimstone, crude-oil-feather-matting, heart-emptying pain of the Fall.

It’s taking its sweet time. He is starting to shake waiting for it to happen, that’s how deep the fear goes.

And Crowley is starting to notice.

“You do know it’s over for now, angel?”

Aziraphale can’t look at him. He’s had to say no to Crowley twice – by the bandstand and then in front of the bookshop – and fears he will not be able to a third time. If only he could just fall. Then everything would be over.

“Drinks, then,” Crowley says. He drags a bottle of wine out of his kitchen, along with two shaker glasses. Crowley wants to tease Aziraphale, put him on edge to provoke a reaction, but Aziraphale is just so tired. He can’t even react to Crowley’s improper choice of glasses, which he is clearly doing to get a rise out of him.

Aziraphale drinks, and he waits, and Crowley watches him with those turmeric eyes that Aziraphale can’t meet.

 _Their own side_ , Crowley had said, yet Aziraphale knows that there is still one thing dividing them.

In the beginning, God had made some angels flawed. Aziraphale is waiting for the confirmation that he is one of them. That six thousand years of loyal service were just leading up to this: his Fall.

“Angel,” Crowley says after they’ve sat together for God knows how long and Aziraphale still hasn’t said anything. He lightly touches Aziraphale’s leg to get his attention, leaning forward and still keeping his eyes fixed on Aziraphale. “You’re going to have to say something eventually. You’re freaking me out.”

Aziraphale looks at Crowley, then. There is concern in Crowley’s eyes, but something else as well – in the slight upward tilt of his mouth, the raised eyebrows.

It’s hope, Aziraphale realises. Crowley is hopeful.

Crowley, the eternal optimist. Aziraphale wonders if he’ll be able to sustain some optimism beyond faith after his Fall.

Aziraphale knows what Crowley hopes. What he _wants_ – what he’s always wanted, since Aziraphale doesn’t know how long. Since Jerusalem, probably before. He wants Aziraphale to let Crowley love him.

It could be so easy. Aziraphale loves him, doesn’t he? He fought for the world, but the world is only this nice because Crowley is in it. They’re indistinguishable for Aziraphale. A planet without Crowley would no longer make sense, simply because Crowley has been a constant since the beginning. Like water. Like air.

But Aziraphale is sitting here, in Crowley’s apartment, knowing he will fall but also realising he still hasn’t, and faces with dread the logical conclusion: that he has not yet committed the unforgivable act.

“Crowley…” he says like it tears him in two to speak this simple word, and in a way it does. “It’s not over, is it?”

“You mean Agnes’ prophecy?”

Crowley gestures vaguely to Aziraphale’s breast pocket, where the sliver of burnt paper is still safely tucked away.

“Oh, we’ll figure it out. Between the two of us, we’ve got twelve thousand years of experience. That ought to do the trick.”

“It’s not that, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, hands balled into fists because he never expected to be here, at the other end of his little rebellion, still nominally a member of the Host. He’d expected to be burning by now.

“What is it, then?” Crowley asks, unerringly, always moving, always pushing forward. He scoots closer to Aziraphale. The familiarity of it makes Aziraphale shake more.

“I know what you want, Crowley.”

There it is, finally out in the open.

Crowley looks perturbed.

“You do?” After Aziraphale nods quickly, Crowley adds. “Well, don’t you?”

He gestures in what he probably thinks is a meaningful manner. “After all, we’ve been… I mean, we have…”

His eyes keep slipping towards Aziraphale’s lips. Aziraphale wets them, unconscious of the movement. Crowley shivers.

“It’s not that I don’t like you, Crowley,” Aziraphale says. He has a feeling he is going about this the wrong way.

Crowley laughs an incredulous laugh. “Good, because that would be really weird now. After everything we’ve been through.”

“You’re not _listening_ to me,” Aziraphale says primly. If he’s going to do this, he has to do it now, and maybe he can still be spared the pain of the Fall.

“Giving in to those feelings would mean succumbing to temptation. I can’t love you, Crowley.”

Crowley just stares, unblinking. It’s funny how eyes that normally seem so warm to Aziraphale can grow so cold. Reptilian.

“What?”

It’s one word, but it comes out sharp, a switchblade to the gut. Crowley pulls his hand away from Aziraphale’s leg. Losing the contact is like pulling up an anchor – Aziraphale feels suddenly adrift.

“There’s something wrong with me, Crowley. I’m not like the other angels. I know I’m not as good, but I have to try, because if I don’t, I lose my post, and that would be unbearable.”

No more watching over the Earth. No more people to protect. No more acts of mercy when people are in need of them, no more miracles in the nick of time. Aziraphale will fall, and then he will be a demon, and demons aren’t allowed to be kind.

“Oh, so it’s sin you’re concerned about?” Crowley snarls. Aziraphale understands the rage that flares up in Crowley’s eyes – he is making a bad job of explaining himself, but if he only tries hard enough, Crowley is bound to understand.

“I’m the one thing you can’t excuse, huh?”

Crowley gets up briskly and begins pacing around the living room. The glass of wine he still holds in one hand sways perilously, and Aziraphale suspects it’s only due to a miracle that nothing spills.

“What do you mean?” Aziraphale asks.

Aziraphale has only seen Crowley like this a handful of times. Their pre-oyster conversation in Rome comes to mind. When he called Crowley _nice_ at the hospital. When – at the bandstand – he suggested Crowley, not him, kill the antichrist.

“All those years, I’ve watched you excuse most of the Big Seven.”

Crowley faces away from Aziraphale.

“Gluttony? You’ve got that one down like a professional. Sloth? God, you were so easy to sell on the Arrangement. Greed? I’ve seen you with your customers at the bookstore. You hate to part with any of these books.”

Crowley finishes one lap and turns to face Aziraphale again.

“And then you have the gall to look at me and tell me I’m beneath you. You’re so _selfish_ , Aziraphale.”

Crowley spits those last words at his feet. Aziraphale recoils, shocked. He doesn’t know what to say, but apparently Crowley isn’t finished yet, anyway.

“You keep me around because you want me, but you don’t have the pride to say it.”

He stands, breathing heavy.

“Selfish?” Aziraphale repeats, quietly.

“I’d do anything for you, angel,” Crowley says, and the lack of hesitation in those words is a testament to his honesty, “But whenever I ask you for anything, you need a five page essay and an expert opinion before you say yes.”

“Well, Crowley, I’m an angel,” Aziraphale says, “There are things I could never –“

“Bullshit!” Crowley calls, “You have, and you would again! What was this whole apocalypse thing, then? Heaven’s not looking anymore. There’s no one watching us but…”

He trails off. Aziraphale stares ahead.

“Yes,” he finishes, “God.”

He might be free from the Host’s judgement, but he will never be free from judgement in the eyes of God.

“Let me ask you this,” Crowley says, and something shifts in his demeanour. Before, he had been upset, now, he is angry. “Do you really feel anything more than pity for me, then?”

“Crowley, please…” Aziraphale protests. Of course, Crowley is different. Crowley is the only demon who has managed to drag themselves out of the self-pitying rage hell has worked up over the course of more than six millennia.

“No, really, I want to hear this. You keep talking about how terrible it is on the other side, how you don’t want to fall but… I’m right here. And I can tell you – whether or not you’re cast out from the Host doesn’t have any bearing on _who you are_.”

“You don’t understand,” Aziraphale says. That was his excuse so many times over the years when Crowley got dangerously close to something Aziraphale didn’t want to admit.

“You’re not the kindest person I know,” Crowley says. He seems determined to make his point regardless of how Aziraphale feels. “But you’ve always been consistent. When you were a Cherubim, when they demoted you to Principality, in Rome or in London. You’ll still be you, Aziraphale, whatever happens to you.”

There was a story among the Host. It is the second oldest story in creation.

“What if I’ve always been broken?” Aziraphale says, “What does that mean for my works on this Earth? Have I just been corrupting humanity, as a flawed angel?”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” Crowley answers. His voice is quiet now, but no less intent. “I’ve been performing miracles for you, and I’m not exactly a paragon of virtue. They always turned out fine.”

“I must be broken,” Aziraphale insists, “I shouldn’t be feeling _love_ for a demon!”

Crowley winces, and Aziraphale regrets his words immediately. Aziraphale has managed it: the worst confession of love in six thousand years of sentient life on Earth.

“Oh, my dear, I didn’t mean… It’s nothing about you, of course…”

“But it is, isn’t it?” Crowley’s grin is joyless, just a show of teeth. “It’s all about me.”

That’s one thing Aziraphale can’t stand to see: Crowley, dejected. Oh, he has gone about this all wrong.

“I do love you,” Aziraphale says.

The sky doesn’t cave in the second time he admits to it, either. He ventures a little further.

“I’ve known I’ve loved you since the church, I think. You remembered my books. The other angels, they only ever saw the big picture, but you paid attention to the details, just like me.”

“The church, angel, really?” Crowley still looks angry, the way he stands leaning forward slightly, as if ready to attack or run. “What was all that we did before then? Platonic making out?”

“I…” Now it’s Aziraphale who is staring at Crowley’s lips. He knows too well how those lips feel on his. “Look, it’s hard enough for me to admit this now. I knew you loved me, of course, but I was so afraid that meant there was something broken about me. I’m still not convinced it doesn’t!”

“You’re always so concerned about all these rules, angel,” Crowley says. “You say it would be a sin for you to love me, but you also just told me that you do. When will you be forgiven, then?”

“When I repent,” Aziraphale says automatically. Crowley is right: it’s not avoiding the sin; it’s regretting it and asking for forgiveness. It’s putting oneself through the ordeal of doing penance for it.

“Go ahead then,” Crowley says. It sounds like a dare, but he is dead serious. “Tell me you regret it.”

Aziraphale opens his mouth and takes a breath to respond, when the realisation of what that would mean washes over him. He closes his mouth again.

“I can’t do that, Crowley,” he says eventually.

“Oh, really?” Crowley snorts. “ _If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them_.”

“Since when are you an expert on the Bible?” Aziraphale says weakly. His resolve is wearing so very, very thin. He hasn’t fallen yet, though he has admitted to his deepest sin, and Crowley is starting to make more and more sense.

Of course, that is how temptations work.

Crowley shrugs. “Had to become one, over the years. You memorize and awful lot when people quote the damn stuff at you trying to exorcise you.”

Aziraphale can’t help himself. He has to laugh. It bursts out of him.

The laughter loosens something in him. It shakes him out of the panic he had worked himself into, like drawing back a curtain on a sunny day and letting in the light.

Crowley is right.

Aziraphale loves him. He can’t deny this – he can bury it for a while, but as an immortal being, every denial is only temporary. In the long run, truth is the only constant. Everything else washes away.

The grave opens. Out of it rises, unchanged, the truth Aziraphale had tried to bury.

“I love you, Crowley,” Aziraphale says.

Crowley seems struck by the non sequitur. Aziraphale rises from the couch, steps in front of Crowley, and takes the glass of wine from him to set it aside.

“I love you, my dear.”

Maybe he is broken. Maybe he has been from the start. As an angel, he was rather unsuccessful at following the changing policy paradigms throughout the years. He was always uncompromising, sticking by what he thought was right instead. And one thing he knows to be right – away from Gabriel’s judging voice, Sandalphon’s insistence on his interpretation of the rules – is that love is never wrong.

“Oh… ok,” Crowley says. All the energy seems drained out of him. The thing he struggled against – Aziraphale’s colossal, monumental, staggering ignorance and self-denial – is overcome. Now he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Luckily, Aziraphale does. He’s been paying attention ever since Crowley first kissed him in Jerusalem.

“I’m sorry for all the things I said,” Aziraphale says, “I was trying to protect myself, and I hurt you in the process. That wasn’t right.”

Crowley tries to wave it off, but Aziraphale pushes on. “You’re a demon, but you’re the kindest person I know. All those times you helped me throughout the years, even before the Arrangement. I remember every single one. And I knew what they meant, even back then.”

Crowley has given up on trying to speak. Instead he stands, mouth half open, and doesn’t even move when Aziraphale takes both of Crowley’s hands into his.

“Will you forgive me, Crowley?”

Crowley’s eyes snap into focus. He nods, quickly and a little desperately.

“I love you, you stupid angel.”

A small part of Aziraphale still waits for the Fall as he presses his lip’s to Crowley’s. But the only sensation he feels is warmth, and comfort, and the familiarity of six thousand years of knowing each other intimately.

He should feel angry, he supposes, at how wrong he got it. There never was any judgement in loving Crowley, except the one he imposed on himself. But then Crowley gently takes a hold of Aziraphale’s hips, and Aziraphale forgets to be angry about what wasn’t, because he’s too busy being happy about what _is_.

* * *

They face Heaven and Hell.

At the end of it, Aziraphale is as close to being fallen as he can be without an actual Fall, and realises that there really is no judgement waiting for him. There’s just Crowley who takes his hand and kisses him. There’s just Crowley, who takes Aziraphale out to lunch and gazes at him in adoration. And later there is Crowley who comes home with Aziraphale, where they curl up together on the small couch in the back of the bookshop and hold each other for a long time, because while being on their own side is freeing, freedom is also frightening.

They spend a lot of nights that way – first on the couch, and then, after Crowley remarks upon it, in the bed. And eventually, they venture outside and begin exploring what it means to have freedom of choice.

Sometimes Aziraphale thinks it would have been handy to hold on to that flaming sword for their new adventures. But he knows now that it wasn’t his to have anyway.

* * *

“And?”

Aziraphale doesn’t notice Uriel until they speak. He flinches away when he does, the park holding bad memories of Crowley in Aziraphale’s body being dragged away, but Uriel makes no move towards him, just stands there, arms folded behind their back. Around them, passers-by move as though the two angels weren’t standing there.

Aziraphale clears his throat.

“A young man came out to his family today. He had to fight for every sentence, but in the end his mother hugged him and told him she loved his new name. She has not felt this grateful since his birth.”

Uriel looks out at the park. When they speak, their voice sounds hesitant. As they continue, it grows in confidence.

“I saw an old woman share her family recipe with a stranger on the train. The old woman never had children. The woman she talked to never got to know her grandmother.”

Heaven has lived through all sorts of policy changes. They accepted a God who was vengeful and would drown people. They accepted a God who would never do that again. They accepted a God who would sacrifice one man to heal the sins of thousands. They accepted a God who wouldn’t.

They will deal with this.

“I saw something else,” Aziraphale says, his voice wavering a little, “I saw someone who was very unobservant for a very long time open his eyes for the first time. And he saw that he is loved, and that he loves, and that neither of those things is ever wrong.”

Uriel glances at Aziraphale. The look on their face isn’t quite understanding but is on its way there. Six thousand years of curiosity has left neither of them unchanged.

“I saw that, too.”

They stand. They watch. Aziraphale feels love ebb and flow around them, soaking it all up, so grateful that there still is a world for him to love.

“I think I’ll go home now. Crowley will be waiting for me.”

The words are powerful. They are six thousand years of unspoken longing, finally given strength enough to be spoken. Aziraphale speaks them with pride.

Uriel’s gaze follows him, but their gaze is neither judgemental nor doubtful. Instead, met again with curiosity, Aziraphale wonders what he inspired among the angels, now that freedom of choice is the dominant policy paradigm.

* * *

There is a story among the Host – or rather, there was.

The current interpretation is that the original story was sparked by a translation error. Her words, after all, are notoriously hard to interpret. Ineffable, one might say.

So there no longer is a story among the Host, but there was, once upon a time. It said that some angels were created flawed. The Host drew its own conclusions from that – who is more flawed than demons?

What it _should_ have said – what the original story implied – was that some angels were made _seeing_. And, being able to see where others had to guess at the shape of things, they didn’t fit in so well.

Some of them fell. That was to be expected. Others remained, always suspecting there was something wrong with them.

It’s not true that I do not play games. I don’t play games save for one, but that one is an incredibly long game, and to explain the rules to you would take more time than you have left in your life. And just when you think you’ve got it, I’ll pull the carpet out from under you.

Crowley and Aziraphale will be fine. They always have been. They’ve survived floods and droughts, hellfire and holy water, and through all of it, they managed to hold onto each other.

Crowley has always been a sharp one. He’s insolent, of course, but he always looks for the man behind the curtain. Aziraphale is softer, but his mind is bent on justice, and he has a sharp sense for it. He will not rest until it is done.

I don’t have favourites among my creation. But I do love the two of them an awful lot.

* * *

_“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”_

― Gospel of Thomas

**Author's Note:**

> I said to myself ‘maestro, da capo!’. Also seasidesonnets requested ‘guilt, longing, and self-denial’ explored for Aziraphale, and as an expert in Catholic guilt, I felt it was my duty to take up the call.
> 
> Some references in the text: Aziraphale repeats the English lyrics to _Großer Gott Wir Loben Dich_ , my favourite hymn (why do I have that, anyway). Also, the English translation is weird. Fun fact: It’s apparently the most popular German hymn – so popular that German immigrants made it one of America’s most popular hymns as well! Thanks for teaching me that, Wikipedia.
> 
> Crowley quotes James 4:17 to convince Aziraphale that 1) civil disobedience is totally in keeping with following God’s teachings and 2) they should really make out.
> 
> I had the _Der Himmel Über Berlin_ script open in a tab for most of the time while writing this. I think a small part of my heart will always live in the scene between Damiel and Cassiel in the car dealership. So if you’re wondering where my Uriel came from – that’s most of my inspiration right there.
> 
> The title is taken from The Mountain Goats’ _Deuteronomy 2:10_ ( _I have no fear of anyone/I’m dumb and wild and free/I am a flightless bird/and there’ll be no more after me_ ).
> 
> Lastly, to continue my naming of Hozier tracks that inspired my fics – I owe my Crowley to _It Will Come Back_. Thanks, dude. 
> 
> As always, you can find me on tumblr at [veganthranduil](https://veganthranduil.tumblr.com/). Come say hello there or in the comments here – I appreciate all of them so much.


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